Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

The Swedish Pimpocracy

Since the most powerful social forces emanate from women it is women who must be controlled in order to control society. – Maggie McNeill

You’ll have to forgive my act of epigrammatic masturbation; though I prefer not to make a habit of quoting myself, in this case I couldn’t find a better one to illustrate this column because it sums up my point: the government of Sweden doesn’t really give a damn about individual women; it just uses women and feminist rhetoric to implement a plain old-fashioned tyranny while hiding under the cloak of “enlightenment”.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the infamous “Swedish Model” of prostitution law we’ve discussed a number of times before; this bit of legalistic skullduggery pretends to be “feminist” by making the act of selling sexual services completely legal, yet criminalizing the purchase of sex. To the slow-witted or neofeminism-addled this may seem to “protect” women, but it actually does nothing of the kind because it attempts to rob whores of their livelihood by cutting off their income stream; once a hooker is identified as such by the police she can even be placed under observation, thus acting as unwilling bait for the entrapment of her customers. Even worse is the principle upon which this model is based; all prostitution is legally defined as coercion, essentially a type of rape. Since no force is involved and the prostitute gives consent, the law basically classifies all whores as legal incompetents who are not qualified to give consent. Just as any sex between an adult man and a girl below the age of consent is classified as him “raping” her even if she initiates the act, so hiring a prostitute is classified as a crime because, like the underage girl, the whore is not legally empowered to give consent. Women in Sweden are thus defined as perpetual minors who are neither able to consent to forms of sex the government disapproves of, nor to be punished for violating the law (just as an underage girl is not liable in a statutory rape case).

Of course, narrow-minded neofeminists who are more concerned with denying men sex than with winning justice for women praise Sweden for this abomination and many of them are trying fervently to get similar systems implemented in their own countries. But perhaps their praise for Sweden and their conviction that it’s some sort of feminist paradise might be lessened if they realized just how dismal the country’s record on actual rape is. As Naomi Wolf reported in Wednesday’s Huffington Post:

Sweden has HIGHER rates of rape than other comparable countries — including higher than the US and Britain, higher than Denmark and Finland — and the same Swedish authorities going after Assange do a worse job prosecuting reported rapes than do police and the judiciary in any comparable country. And these are flat-out, unambiguous reported rape cases, not the ‘sex by surprise’ Assange charges involving situations that began consensually. Indeed, the Swedish authorities — who are now being depicted as global feminist sex-crime-avenger superheroes in blue capes — were shamed by a 2008 Amnesty International report, “Case Closed“, as being far more dismissive of rape, and far more insulting to rape victims who can be portrayed as ‘asking for it’ by drinking or any kind of sexual ambiguity — than any other country in their comparison group. As Amnesty International put it in a blistering attack: “Swedish Rapists Get Impunity.”

Wolf goes on to point out that of all reported rapes in Sweden, fewer result in any legal proceedings at all than do comparable cases in the US, Finland and Norway; “a woman who has been raped in Sweden is ten times more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer than she is of getting any kind of legal proceeding on her behalf undertaken by Swedish prosecutors.” What’s more, during the same period (1983-1993) which saw an increase in neofeminist prohibitionism schemes in parliament, Swedish rape rates increased; since 1993 (when neofeminists almost unanimously unified behind what we now call the “Swedish Model”, finally enacted in 1999) the rape rate has quadrupled, yet the conviction rate is much lower now than it was in 1965 (when active debate on gender equality began and prostitution was not viewed as an equality issue). And though neofeminists in other countries turn a blind eye to this outrage, normal Swedish women have largely resigned themselves to it; a 2007 study showed that only 5-10% of rapes in Sweden are reported, as compared to the 13-30% rate in the U.S. and U.K. Of the Swedish incidents which are reported, fewer than 13% resulted in legal action of any kind, and less than 10% of those actions result in conviction. Expressed in raw numbers, of the roughly 30,000 women who are raped in Sweden each year, only 20-30 will ever see their attackers punished to any degree.

These facts tend to make Sweden’s aggressive pursuit of Julian Assange for far less serious sex charges rather suspect; as I said in my column of December 10th, “the whole thing stinks on ice.” And there’s a lot of ice in Sweden. Many American supporters of Assange have attempted to portray his treatment as persecution by militant feminists in the Swedish government, but the fact of the matter is that there aren’t enough real feminists in the Swedish government to fill my bedroom. Female Swedish parliamentarians are almost unanimously neofeminists, biologically female control freaks who will not hesitate to sell out their sisters for political power. And the Swedish government only “promotes” feminism as a domineering pimp “promotes” a whore: As a commodity to be bought, sold or traded for its own purposes. Sweden views women as a natural resource to be exploited in much the same way as it exploits timber, hydropower and iron ore, and its leaders only mouth platitudes about “equality” to keep female Swedish voters happy so they can stay in power. Its dismal record on rape and its tyrannical efforts to reduce whores to slaves of its bloated welfare state demonstrate that Sweden doesn’t actually care about the welfare of individual women, but rather only about the political support of women collectively. As Wolf states near the end of her column:

Finally, remember that in the Assange case it is the State rather than the women themselves that is bringing the charges. The Swedish state — which has proven, in politically neutral cases that merely involve actual assaults against women — such a shameful custodian of raped victims’ well-being.

Many intelligent women (including the European group Women Against Rape and one of my favorite bloggers, Furry Girl) recognize the pursuit of Julian Assange for what it is: A politically-motivated persecution of a man who embarrassed several of the most powerful governments on Earth, using rape as an excuse in order to win the support of silly, gullible women (including, apparently, a number of the staff at Jezebel). As Katrin Axelsson points out in the linked Women Against Rape article, this is no different from the old Southern practice of lynching uppity black men for looking at white women. It’s not a defense of women, but rather an exploitation.

31 Responses

As I’ve mentioned before on here, I completely agree with that assessment. I believe Assange deserves severe punishment for his actions in potentially endangering the lives of American military and intelligence forces around the world. He doesn’t deserve to be railroaded on trumped up charges though. That sets a horrendous precedent, and anyone advocating what’s happening to Assange needs to think deeply about the egregiously bad–and incredibly dangerous–precedent being set.

I agree that witch hunts are no good, and that is what this appears to be shaping up to be – though I’m waiting for more facts before I can say Assange did nothing wrong with regards to these women, or vice versa for that matter.

However, I must respectfully disagree with the prudence of punishing Assange or other WikiLeaks editors for what they have published. I believe that it constitutionally is and should be the responsibility of the U.S. government to keep its own confidential diplomatic cables from becoming public. If we start telling people which facts they may or may not write or speak about, we are starting down a road to curtailing the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of expression. That way lies an Official Secrets Act.

And yes, I realize that protection doesn’t include shouting fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire, but it most certainly does include shouting fire in a crowded theater that is on fire. That is to say that it does not protect fraud, but it does protect the release of facts regardless of circumstances. Nor am I saying anyone should always publish what they know. I am saying that punishing them when we the people think that they have exercised poor judgment in what to say or publish is an overreach of government power and contrary to the principles on which America was founded. Censorship is the linchpin of mobocracy.

Now, there is one type of situation in which the government is fully justified in bringing down the hammer on loose lips; specifically when the owner of those lips has sworn not to divulge certain information. Hence PFC Bradley Manning’s dismal prospects for a future outside the prison walls at Fort Leavenworth, or any future at all if they throw the book at him for betraying his oath.

Once information is in the public sphere, cracking down on those who retell it is by far the greater evil. It royally sucks if this information turns out to endanger U.S. troops, allies and the private citizens of other countries who risk their own skin to subvert totalitarian regimes. But I am not willing to allow the fabric of my favorite republic to unravel in order to obtain a little added security for myself or anyone else. There are not many things I would die for, but the U.S. Constitution and its Bill or Rights are very near the top of the list. Life without freedom is slavery by definition. I don’t mean to sound melodramatic, and I’m sorry if I come off preachy, but these are things I feel very strongly about.

Thanks, Laura! To clarify, I don’t mean to suggest that feminists outside the Swedish government are complicit in its actions, or that the Swedish government is any worse than any other. What I am saying is the opposite, that despite its “equality” rhetoric it isn’t any better than its neighbors, either.

Here’s a translation I cobbled together a little while ago while trying to convey the finer points of the Swedish penal code to a friend. It translates the first two sections of the Swedish penal code, Chapter 6 (sexual crimes), § 1 (rape). The remainder of § 1 specifies the differences in sentencing guidelines for severe and less severe rape (the more resp. less severe gradations of the label)

1. A person who through physical abuse or otherwise through violence or threat of criminal acts forces a person to sexual intercourse or to perform or endure other sexual acts that with consideration of the intrusions character and other circumstances is comparable to intercourse, will be charged with rape to prison in 2-6 years.

2. The same holds for a person who performs a sexual act comparable to intercourse as specified in the first paragraph through illicit use of the person from lack of consciousness, sleep, alcohol or drug influence, illness, body harm or mental disturbance or otherwise can be considered not able to defend themselves.

It is to a large extent section 2 that distinguishes the Swedish penal code treatment of rape from other countries’; it introduces the notion that defenselessness as a sufficient criterion. Subsequent judicial practice has refined the notion — for instance, penetration is not necessary: the “other sexual acts” covers a spread of non-penetrating acts that may, in context, be considered to be equivalent in effect.

Thank you, Mikael! That wording does seem extremely vague on several points; for example, “comparable to intercourse” could mean one thing to an inexperienced girl and quite another thing to a jaded prosecutor. Legislators who write laws like this might think they’re extending protection against a broader group of offenses, but in actuality they’re merely introducing uncertainty which could allow either aggressive prosecutors or wily defense attorneys considerable “wriggle room.” 😦

Chapter 6
Section 1
A person who by assault or otherwise by violence or by threat of a criminal act forces another person to have sexual intercourse or to undertake or endure another sexual act that, having regard to the nature of the violation and the circumstances in general, is comparable to sexual intercourse, shall be sentenced for rape to imprisonment for at least two and at most six years.

This shall also apply if a person engages with another person in sexual intercourse or in a sexual act which under the first paragraph is comparable to sexual intercourse by improperly exploiting that the person, due to unconsciousness, sleep, intoxication or other drug influence, illness, physical injury or mental disturbance, or otherwise in view of the circumstances in general, is in a helpless state.

If, in view of the circumstances associated with the crime, a crime provided for in the first or second paragraph is considered less aggravated, a sentence to imprisonment for at most four years shall be imposed for rape.

If a crime provided for in the first or second paragraph is considered gross, a sentence to imprisonment for at least four and at most ten years shall be imposed for gross rape. In assessing whether the crime is gross, special consideration shall be given to whether the violence or threat was of a particularly serious nature or whether more than one person assaulted the victim or in any other way took part in the assault or whether the perpetrator having regard to the method used or otherwise exhibited particular ruthlessness or brutality.

The remainder of Chapter 6 enumerates all other sexual crimes — this is the extent to which the law specifies «rape».

That is really incredibly vague and broad, isn’t it? It seems far too based on feelings and comparisons to constitute the definition of a specific crime; it’s more like a general description of a whole class of crimes.

Now what’s being bandied about Assange is that he grew up in “an LSD cult.” Of course, when you look into it it seems more like he knew people who knew people who grew up in the “cult,” and whether or not he himself ever had anything to do with it is less certain.

So they’ve brought sex and drugs into it; can rock n’ roll be far behind?

Exactly. It has nothing to do with whether or not the information is good, nor about whether or not it is dangerous (and it seems that no military personnel have been put at risk; even Assange’s critics aren’t claiming that).

Let’s assume the worst: he was brought up in a weird (to us) religious cult, took scads of acid before he even hit his teens, and today is a serial rapist. Well, that would make him somebody I wouldn’t want to be friends with, and somebody who needs to be taken off the streets, but what has it to do with Wikileaks?

If we suddenly found out he was a life-long Presbyterian and a virgin, would everybody criticizing him over Wikileaks suddenly change their minds? No.

As for the bread and wine cult you grew up in… maybe it kept you from becoming a full-fledged harlot about ten years earlier? Maybe not, I don’t know.

From what I can gather there seems to be something of a cult of personality crystallizing around Assange. This probably has nothing to do with him – he doesn’t seem like a limelight hog – but rather the very human tendency toward hero worship/demonization. The very term hero comes from the ancient Greek tradition of elevating certain notable persons to demigod status.

What I wonder is, does anyone really think that Assange’s fate (and I hope he gets a fair hearing whatever else he may or may not be culpable of) is intertwined with that of WikiLeaks both as an organization and as one example of a larger phenomenon? Cryptome has been exposing the cracks in security for fourteen years. Daniel Ellsberg was embarrassing the U.S. government forty years ago. Bletchley Park and Alan Turing were making Swiss cheese out of the Nazi’s intel seventy years ago. WikiLeaks is just the latest chapter in how unrealistic it is to control the spread of information across a networked globe. For better or worse, this is the brave new world we inhabit. We can either find a way to live, work and govern in it, or we can dig our heels in and waste the chance to adapt on trying to rebottle the genie.

Happy Xmas/Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Islamic New Year/Winter Solstice/Grinch Day

I don’t follow the news on issues of prostitution or rape – my speciality is distributed social networks – so my question will certainly be naïve. But anyway, one has to learn…

The problem I have now in understanding statements such as “rape has gone up” dramatically in Sweden, but only few are prosecuted, is that if “rape” is defined in such a way to make it possible for Assange to be a minor rapist then it’s not surprising that rape reports go up, since it it is not provable that it was committed, and depends very much on the subjective state of one partner.

The rape that people in the world are concerned about, as Noami Wolf points out, are gang rapes, forced prostitution rings, and so on. Everybody is violently against those for sure: I think in most countries of this world, you would not find it difficult to find any sane man who on knowledge of such a crime would feel the urge to revenge and kill the perpetrators in return. But I don’t think anyone would feel the urge to go and do the same for actions as they are reported to have happened in Sweden in the Assange case. I think those would be more appropriately turned into a joke.

So given a reasonable definition of rape, such as those that would lead people to the reactions described, have those gone up in Sweden? I do doubt it. But well one can be surprised. I just don’t see Swedish people in that light. (But I could be wrong). Much more likely is that as you point out with prostitution, the change comes from a change of the meaning of the word “rape”.

Hi Henry! From what Laura Augustin says in the article she linked above, you may be right:

[Sweden] defines rape as any situation where sex occurs after someone has said no. In many countries, and in many people’s minds, rape means penetration, usually by a penis, into a mouth, vagina or anus. In Swedish rape law, the word can be used for acts called assault or bodily harm in other countries. That may be progressive, but it’s also confusing…Discussions of rape nowadays use examples of women who are asleep, or have taken drugs or drunk too much alcohol, in order to argue that they cannot properly consent to sex. If they feel taken advantage of the next day, they may call what happened rape.

So it may indeed be that the sharp rise in “rape” actually indicates an ever-loosening definition of what “rape” means rather than a bona fide increase in forced sexual penetration; this would certainly make sense considering that the rise in “rape” corresponds to a rise in gender-war rhetoric among female parliamentarians. If that is indeed the case, the Swedish “rape” statistics become as meaningless as the “child prostitution” statistics from an infamous report which defined “adolescence” as ending at 21. 😦

ok I started reading the “Case Closed” paper Naomi Wolf points to in the extract you site above.

One thing one notices is that in ¶ “Rape in sudden assault by strangers”:

“This kind of rape is seen as comparatively easy to tackle for investigative purposes, because the credibility of the victim may not be questioned in the same way as it is in acquaintance rapes.”

And in this case:

“Such rapes have decreased in both Denmark and Sweden over the last decade.”

—

The if one looks at ¶ “Acquaintance rape and date rape”

“In Sweden, rape committed by a superficial acquaintance accounts for approximately 40 per cent of all reported cases. In addition, rapes in situations where the victim and perpetrator have just met, for example in restaurants, bars or clubs, have increased in Sweden.”

Now if I take this and I put it together with what you say above about prostitution, then large parts of those could just be prostitutes set up by police.

—

I also noticed that the paper speaks mostly of women rape and not of men being raped. For example
in the ¶ “Attrition in rape cases: investigation quality vital”

“Women’s chances of obtaining justice and redress in rape cases are largely dependent on the quality of the investigation”

Why women? Is that because the statistics show that this is not true for men?
—

Anyway an interesting article, and I am quite sure an immensely complicated debate, made even more complicated some would say by the lack of a space for moral education. One has to wonder if the mass availability of erotic/pornographic material everywhere does not itself contribute to making it difficult for people to know what actions are right or wrong. There is clearly an educational issue, and then one could wonder if there is also not a cultural one too, since it involves the man correctly interpreting the woman’s desire or refusal, which may be different in different countries.

Now if I take this and I put it together with what you say above about prostitution, then large parts of those could just be prostitutes set up by police.

The only problem with that idea is that the police would vigorously pursue such cases, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t simply observe it, say “there was a rape” and move on. Any figures in any study of “unreported rapes” are obviously derived from self-reporting to the researchers.

Why women? Is that because the statistics show that this is not true for men?

Because the overwhelming majority of adult rapes (outside of special circumstances like prison) are of women. Male-on-male rape in prison is very common indeed, as is man-on-boy rape, but these are special circumstances which are correlated separately.

Good article. Now ask yourself why Muslim women do not like to emigrate to Sweden. If you’ve ever lived in the Middle East before (like me, in Beirut), then you’ll know most Muslim women rather go to America than any of the Scandinavian countries. Why? You really have to have been in the Mideast to hear roughly the line that “all of Scandinavia is a monster to women.” I don’t know how true this thinking is from personal experience, but I’m kind of inclined to believe the Muslim women on this score.

As to Swedish law, the country is a civil code jurisdiction. And like all civil code countries, the criminal codes are a right abortion when compared with those in common law jurisdictions like England and Wales, Australia, Canada, the USA, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. Any Year 1 uni law student will be able to tell you that. Civil code systems often produce laws from a philosophical, abstractionist perspective. Common law systems tend to produce statutes based on breaches of prohibitions. That’s a simplistic answer, but I think it’ll do for now here.

Even allowing for the free translation from Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson (commenter above), you can readily see the laughingly amateurish legal draftmanship of the Swedish statutes on rape. Any Year 2 uni law student can do better than that. That example is by no means an exception: this kind of lack of quality legal draftmanship is quite common in civil code law systems.

For a different perspective, look at the state laws of Louisiana in the USA. Louisiana is a civil code jurisdiction, unlike the rest of the USA. However, Louisiana laws are drafted very precisely mainly because of the influence of common law that the rest of the country operates with.

Of course, red-blooded civil code adherents are going to hate and detest my opinion on this, just as equally I don’t like theirs. The fact remains that, if common law statutes are precisely drafted and they’re still a right toss-up, imagine the lack of legal composure of civil code statutes.

Those who have the misfortune of reading investigative reports by civil code magistrates (as I have) will totally realise what I’m on about.

[…] The Swedish Pimpocracy Many intelligent women (including the European group Women Against Rape and one of my favorite bloggers, Furry Girl) recognize the pursuit of Julian Assange for what it is: A politically-motivated persecution of a man who embarrassed several of the most powerful governments on Earth, using rape as an excuse in order to win the support of silly, gullible women (including, apparently, a number of the staff at Jezebel). As Katrin Axelsson points out in the linked Women Against Rape article, this is no different from the old Southern practice of lynching uppity black men for looking at white women. It’s not a defense of women, but rather an exploitation. […]

Ms McNeil, since you write about the Swedish model (and what saddening things do you say about it), I feel compelled to ask: do you see any chance of things changing in the near future? Or is the Swedish public so comfortably convinced that theirs is “the best system” even with respect to prostitution and trafficking laws that things will probably not change in the foreseeable future?

I don’t see it changing because governments never legalize anything unless they’re forced to. I don’t think the Swedish public is actually convinced their system is all that great any more than the American public is convinced ours is, but there are a lot of politicians who are convinced it helps to keep them in power so it will stay that way until there is an overwhelming public outcry…and several years past that point.

But I’m sure Laura Augustin is much more qualified than I to estimate the popularity of these laws with the Swedish public.

Ok, Maggie! (I’m kinda of an old-fashioned guy. No, actually, I’m a foreigner — Brazilian — so calling someone I’ve never really met by their first name feels a bit funny to me.)

I’ve asked Ms August… ahn, Laura this question. She hasn’t answered yet, but maybe she will. At any rate, I’ve been thinking a little about this, and it seems to me that, in Sweden, it may very well be that people who aren’t that much affected by prostitution (men and women who aren’t and never were prostitutes, and who also never hired one) will mostly accept whatever they hear about it — their experience is not going to guide them. Since these categories are probably the majority of the population… there you are, no big force behind changing anything.

Minorities have succeeded in history to get their rights protected even when they had to deal with an apathic majority, but it took time, a lot of propaganda and publicity, public events, famous court cases that make the bad aspects of current policy obvious, things like that.

In the case of Sweden, their ambition to be the ‘most progressive country in the world’ (it’s difficult to meet a Swede, male or female, who doesn’t show at least a few little signs of thinking their country has something to teach to the world and should be imitated) might work in favor of sex workers. After all, in many ways the arguments against sex work are old, albeit couched in a different language these days. If this can be clearly shown, it might make the Swedes actually feel ashamed of having a country that, in some ways, is less progressive than New Zealand.

The Swedish statistics make little sense until you look at the racial aspect. Sweden have a population muslim immigrants who use rape as a tool of Jihad. Most of the rapes are comitted by black muslim young men who operate under the usual madonna/whore worldview. The swedish authorities dare not admit this, because doing so would be racist.
When oh when are people going to work yout that culture ≠ race, and recognising cultural differences and barbarities is not the same as being racist?

Feminists objected that, in trying to stimulate the economy, Obama was devoting too much money to infrastructure which would result in the hiring of men (construction workers), and they used their lobbying clout to get much of the stimulus package designated for jobs in healthcare and education. Something, by the way, which is ridiculous. Healthcare is already too bloated — and, healthcare spending should be in line with healthcare NEEDS, not in line with the desires/needs of women to have JOBS. If I’m not sick, I shouldn’t be using unneeded “healthcare” just to help a woman have a job.

But, anyway, feminism in Sweden is a heavily economic movement and the government in Sweden employs tons and tons of women — in typical pink collar ghettos. Fact of the matter is, every time there is a rape complaint, the raped women is eligible for tons of mental health “services” from rape counselors care of the government. Rape in Sweden is used as an excuse to create jobs for women. But, remember, the government has limited money. Feminists want as much money as possible to be spent paying THEIR SALARIES. What would happen if they prosecuted more rape cases and put more rapists in prison?

They’d need to build more prisons. OUCH. That would create more jobs for burly men. Imagine the feminist outrage and horror. Furthermore, if the government spent more money on prisons, they’d have to take it from somewhere to balance the budget — more money on prisons means less money spent to pay the salaries of feminist rape advocates.

That is probably a major reason why Sweden handles rape so poorly. The more rape there is, the more money feminists get. Also, Sweden has a major “party industry” going on what with bars, drinking, and a major night life, I’ve heard. That guarantees corruption. Which feminism, it seems, fits hand in glove with.

You’re getting your knickers in a knot over Sweden. Semi-pro prostitution is alive and well there, as in all parts of the world. I’m not sure why you turned against the semi-pro life, since that’s how you started in college, if I recall (I’m working through your archives).

The semi-pro model begins with mutual attraction followed by good sex. Then the girl complains she can’t enjoy sex anymore because she’s so stressed with money troubles or something of the sort. Guy takes the hint and gives the girl some cash or pays her bills directly. The stress disappears and the good sex returns. If the guy doesn’t take the hint, he becomes an ex-boyfriend. Also, if the guy tries to enforce an exclusive arrangement, either against the girl’s will or without coughing up enough money, he becomes an ex. Simple and elegant solution to the problem of not enough women receptive to sex. Runs under the radar of all anti-prostitution laws.

The losers in the semi-pro model are men/women who can’t pass the mutual attraction test. These are the lower castes whom society must punish, as a warning to others not to do whatever it is that makes a person unattractive, or exterminate if the unattractiveness is genetic.

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